The Soul Hunter (21 page)

McKnight started the tape again. We all watched as Pryne’s distress intensified and the officers’ behavior mirrored right along.

Pryne’s attention seemed focused on the back corner of the room. The cops started moving away from that same corner. An inch or two at a time.

“What’s going on?” I asked at last. “Am I missing something?”

McKnight paused the tape. He and Jackson looked at one another again. Martinez crossed his arms.

“It seemed like it started getting cold in there,” McKnight said at last.

Jackson nodded.

“Cold?” I asked. “What do you mean, like temperature cold?”

“Cold. And…I don’t know…empty. Like the air was almost leaving the room,” Jackson said.

“Stuffy? Like someone turned the air off?” I asked. “Maybe the heat went off.”

“No. Not stuffy,” McKnight said. “Dead.”

“Dead,” I repeated. “I don’t understand what that means.”

“It seemed like I got kinda nervous,” McKnight said.

Jackson nodded. “Yeah. Like that.”

“Keep talking,” Martinez said.

“It was almost like a panic-type of a feeling. Like something you’d feel if—”

“If maybe you heard someone break into your house,” Jackson said, “and maybe the noise woke you up in the middle of the night. Like something bad was about to happen. Something very, very bad.”

“Or maybe someone stuck a gun in your ribs,” McKnight said. “That happened to me once. Like that.”

“Could it have been a reaction to Pryne’s change in demeanor?”
Martinez asked me. “Could they have noticed it and been responding to it subconsciously?”

“Possibly, but that doesn’t seem sufficient to explain panic,” I answered. “You both felt it, right?”

They looked at each other and nodded.

“Did it feel like something came into the room with you? Is that why you’re scooting away from that corner?” Martinez asked.

“Nothing came into that room,” Jackson said loudly. “The door was locked and guarded. We were in there alone. Look at the tape. For the love of Pete. Do you see anyone else in there?”

“Why do you ask?” I said to Martinez.

“My grandmother was from Mexico. Deep Mexico. Where you still have to kill the pig yourself before you eat it. She was a very superstitious woman. They’re like that in that part of the country. Real Catholic, but almost tribal about rituals and superstitions. Always running down to the
curandero
to ward off one spirit or another.”

“What’s that?” I asked. “
Curandero?
”

“It’s basically a magic shop. It’s got charms, incense, dolls, crosses—all like that—for getting rid of bad spirits or calling on one saint or another for protection, or maybe for putting a curse on someone. It’s from the Spanish,
curar
, which means to heal or cure. You see them in the barrios here in the states.

“Some woman will be running the place and she looks like she’s four hundred years old, sitting there smoking a pipe and looking at you all suspicious-like. And when you pay for your stuff, she’ll say something really eerie like ‘Your girlfriend has had a change of heart,’ and you don’t know what she’s talking about. You were on an errand for your grandmother to get a St. Jude candle or something. And then two weeks later, the girl that just broke up with you will call you and want you back.” He grinned. “At least, that’s what happened to me one time.”

“You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” McKnight asked.

“I’m just saying I saw some funny things when I visited my grandmother’s house in the summertime.”

“What’s your point?” Jackson asked.

“Yaya used to say that you can always tell when a spirit comes into the room. The air gets cold and dead. Those were her words. Cold and dead. Or, technically,
frio y muerto
. She didn’t speak English.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Yaya?”

Martinez blushed. “
Mi abuelita.
My grandmother. My brothers and I called her Yaya.”

“That’s very touching,” Jackson said impatiently. “Can we move on?”

“Hey, do you guys really have a witness that saw him with Drew?” I asked.

“Six thirty the night of the murder. On Harry Hines,” Jackson said.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Name’s Skinny,” McKnight said.

“Drug addict,” I said.

McKnight nodded and started the tape again.

Twice during the interrogation, McKnight’s cell phone buzzed and he stepped out. The first time to take my phone call. The second, to escort me into the station after I arrived.

We watched him return the second time, leaving me behind the mirror.

Pryne tensed immediately on his return.

And then we watched the scene again. Pryne sniffing the air. Pulling at his chains. Screaming “Get her out of here,” at increasing volume. And the howl. That macabre, almost lupine howl.

We watched the whole thing without saying a word.

The tape continued to run, replaying Pryne’s collapse, his begging. Balled up there, on the bloodstained floor, crying and
chained and snared like an animal, he looked small to me. Helpless. A wretched, pathetic little shell of a human being.

McKnight and Jackson turned away from the screen and started talking with Martinez. I watched the video as the stretcher was rolled in and the paramedics worked to get Pryne stable, then chained him to the gurney and rolled him out of the room.

Broken
was the word that kept ringing in my head. The man looked broken.

I joined the conversation at that point. No one bothered to turn off the tape. It ran as background noise, muffled voices mumbling in the distance as the camera stared at an empty room.

We talked vaguely about Pryne, about evidence and forthcoming legal procedures, about the unlikelihood that he would confess. We discussed the particulars of methamphetamine withdrawal, but everyone knew we’d witnessed something far more ominous than that—something so grisly and disturbing that no one was up to talking about it at that moment. It had been a long, unpleasant day.

McKnight and Jackson, both shaken and irritable, excused themselves to write up their reports.

Martinez turned to me. “What’s your background, Doctor? Are you an M.D.?”

“Psychologist,” I said. “I teach at SMU. How about you?”

“Fifteen years with the DPD. Became chaplain a couple of years ago.”

“How do you get to be a chaplain with the Dallas Police Department?” I asked.

“You end up being the one people call. The one they don’t mind confiding in. You know how that is. Probably happens to you all the time. Eventually, the department just makes it official. Throws you a couple of hundred bucks a month to add it to your résumé. And I took some theology in college. That helps.”

“Really? Where did you go to school?”

“Trinity University in San Antonio. I grew up down there.” He shrugged. “Yaya wanted me to be a priest.”

“How does she like you being a cop?”

“I waited until she passed before I joined the force. She’s probably still bugging St. Jude about it, trying to get him to talk me into changing my mind. Poor guy.”

I smiled. “Maybe the chaplain thing is a good compromise.”

“It’ll have to do for now,” he said. “And your spiritual background, Dr. Foster? Do you mind if I ask?”

“Just a regular, white-bread American type of Christian person. We don’t know about
curanderos
. Or Yayas.” I decided to confess. “I studied theology, too.”

“How’d you end up in psychology?”

“I’m not well-behaved enough to be a professional Christian. I thought I’d go for civilian life instead. Besides, like you, I suspect, I like working with people. I’m more interested in their stories than their sins.”

“So what’s his story?” he said.

“You mean Pryne?”

He nodded.

“Don’t know. I think there’s more to it than meets the eye. Do you know anything about him? His background? Where he grew up or anything?”

“We’ve got it all in a file somewhere, I’d bet. Want to take a look at it? I can probably get that cleared.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow. We’ll find a time to meet.”

I wrote down my number for him.

“You look tired,” he said, reaching for the card.

“Headache. I think my brain’s trying to escape my skull through my eye sockets.”

“I have some aspirin in my office.”

“I’d be grateful,” I said.

He nodded and left. I massaged my temples, my eyes closed against the light.

The tape was still running. I heard something on the monitor as someone came back into the empty interrogation room. I looked over and saw a janitor wheel in a mop and bucket. He pushed the table and chairs back against the wall and then walked toward the camera, his image becoming huge and finally dissolving into a dark swatch of shirt as he reached for the tripod to move it.

The image cleared as he scooted the camera out of his way. It was pointed at the mirror now—Pryne’s view during the interview.

I squinted at the monitor and froze the image. I could see the whole room now, including that corner that made everyone so nervous. I pushed play and watched for a few minutes until I saw it.

There. In the mirror. A quick, fleeting image and he was gone.

Peter Terry was there. Standing in the corner. Laughing.

F
ree-range anxiety is a lot like a free-range rooster. It can move about at will, and if provoked, it just might peck you to death. My anxiety, already pushing hard against the fence, broke loose at this point and jumped the chicken wire, clucking madly and scattering feathers everywhere.

Out of sheer gut will, I got myself home in one piece so I could fall apart in private, thank you very much, with only the demon inhabiting my home as a witness. And the rats. I’d almost forgotten about the rats. They could enjoy the show, too, for all I cared.

Before I left, I asked Martinez for a copy of the interrogation tape, which he promised he would get for me, along with the copy of Pryne’s file. The cop who drove me home seemed to sense my distress. He walked, or rather slid alongside me to my door, checked the place for bogeymen, and salted my sidewalk for me before he left.

My house was cozy with the smell of chili, which I’d completely forgotten about. After I checked every lock in the house three or four times and turned on my space heaters, I pulled the chili out of the oven and spooned myself out a big helping, loading it up with cheddar cheese and sliced jalapenos for zip. I ripped open a bag of Fritos—since Fritos are made out of corn, I was counting that as a vegetable—and sat myself down to supper.

I ate like a plow horse after a long day of sod-busting. I tried to block out visions of fat cells exploding in my thighs as I crunched my way through the first handful of Fritos. I thought about the rats as I ate, wondering if they were watching me, their little beady eyes mapping out grids on my kitchen floor in preparation for a late night reconnaissance mission for Frito crumbs. The smell of chili warming in the oven all afternoon must have driven them crazy, the nasty little vermin.

Speaking of nasty little vermin, Peter Terry knew Gordon Pryne, it turned out. And Gordon Pryne clearly knew Peter Terry. I felt my stomach flip as I let this thought enter my conscious mind.

Could Peter Terry be Gordon Pryne’s accomplice? But no, it was the fingerprints that had pointed Jackson toward a second offender. I didn’t know enough about demons to know if they had fingerprints, but it seemed unlikely.

I couldn’t think clearly. The day had been too long. It would be an exercise in foolishness to let myself speculate about fingerprints and demons and stalker notes and ax murderers. I could feel my brain winding up for it, the clucking and pecking getting louder by the second, urging me to run blindly around in circles, only to get nowhere and scratch myself all to pieces on the way.

I got up from the table and paced a circuit around the kitchen instead, pausing to open the water heater cabinet. My water heater stared back at me, opaline white, a glowing, sanctimonious reminder of my obsessions run amok. I knew better than to check underneath it for rat poo. Instead, I reached out my hand, felt the heat, then shut the cabinet and cleared the table.

I cleaned the kitchen, allowing myself the small comfort of a Comet-scoured sink and a humming dishwasher, and got ready for bed, besotted with gratitude that my water heater still worked.

Sometimes Jesus just throws me a little bone.

I tossed up a quick prayer of thanks, tucked myself in, and
proceeded to toss and turn for the rest of that long night.

With morning came a break in the weather, along with the general collapse of my mania. I simply could not keep it up any longer. I’d finally worn myself out.

I fixed a cup of tea and looked out my kitchen window.

The lumpy rain had stopped, and the sun was making a welcome but meager showing through the clouds. I pried the newspaper off the front porch and checked the weather. The temperature was supposed to ease all the way up to thirty-four, starting the melt that would liberate the city by late afternoon. If it froze again that night, we’d be in for another slick day tomorrow.